least need to be registered as such by some other event ornobject that has the selective sensitivity to do so. Many eventsnand objects can be registered by very crude “observers,” thatnneed only be made of matter to do their job. Others,nthough — and here things get interesting — do need rathernsophisticated observers; and there are many whose morencomplex aspects only come into existence at the call of suchnsophistication and sensitivity. Or let us put it this way — thenobserver is enfolded, in whatever way the observer isncapable, in the being of the prior event that is observed. Ifnthe observer is crude, its report will form part of the brutenconsensus of matter; but if the observer is very sensitive, newnproperties will appear, and will really begin retroactively tonexist, within the past event that is observed. Organized formsnof matter are more sensitive, have finer resonances, thannamorphous ones; living things, animals and plants and so on,nare more sensitive than stones; and we are more sensitiventhan animals and plants, if only because our sensitivitynincludes theirs (and if it did not, we could not even arguenabout their relative merits).nIt was Wheeler’s idea to apply this reasoning to the mostnimportant quantum event of all: the origin of the universe.nIn what sense was the origin of the universe a “quantumnevent”? The Big Bang theory, which best satisfies thenevidence, requires that before it was Vio^” second old thenwhole of the universe must have been packed into a spacenless than ‘/lo'” centimeters in radius, and this was all thenspace there was. It is precisely this realm of space and timenwithin which quantum theory holds, and within which thenrole of the observer becomes important. We human beingsnare certainly the most obvious and sensitive observers of thenorigin — for instance, we are still picking up the backgroundnradiation of the Big Bang from all directions, a form ofninformation about it that is direct and unmediated, if verynold.nOne of the greatest challenges to the cosmotologist is whynthe universe originated with the precise numerical constantsnthat it did. These constants include the inverse square law bynwhich the force of gravitation diminishes with distance, thenspeed of light, the electron volt constant, Planck’s constant,nand so on. If these constants had been different in thenslightest degree, no conceivable form of life could havenevolved; indeed it is hard to see how even organized matterncould have evolved. Why should we have had the astonishingnluck to have got the exact origin that would bring about anuniverse which in the fullness of time would deliver us intonexistence?nWheeler’s anthropic principle answers this riddle elegantlynby suggesting that of all the possible origin-states for thenuniverse, only one would bring about observers of it thatncould collapse its wave-function, ask it the question thatnwould force it to declare a particular identity. Thus thenuniverse originated as it did, with that particular set ofnconstants, because it was since seen to do so. Any othernhypothetical universe would remain only an eternal possibility.nWe, its observers, necessitated an observer-producingnorigin; and our question about it, like Parsifal’s, though longndelayed, transforms the Waste Land of the original uncertaintyninto the rich and productive field of cosmic evolution.nHowever, this formulation of the idea is still a ratherncoarse one. There is, as we have already noted, a wide rangenof organisms between photons and human beings, ofnvarying degrees of organization and complexity; from atoms,nwhich are sensitive to electromagnetic and gravitationalninformation, through crystals, which are also sensitive tonvibration, heat, and’ so on, to animals, which can smell, see,nand hear. All of these can act as observers and ask, in theirnown way, the fructifying question of Parsifal. Thus it wouldnbe more accurate to say that as more and more sensitivenobservers evolved, they respecified more and more exactlynwhat the initial state of the universe must have been.nAlater, more evolved and sophisticated organism collapsesnthe wave function not only of the Big Bang but alsonof all prior organisms; either indirectly, through the BignBang itself, or directly, because of its implicit observation ofnquantum events within those simpler, earlier beings. Thusnthe chordates had to be as they were to bring aboutnvertebrate observers; vertebrates must be just so to occasionnmammalian observers, mammals to bring about primates,nand primates to be the ancestors of human beings. The fruitnof any process is also an observer of it and thus a partialndeterminer of its nature.nWe can know the infinitely interestingnmiracle of being, but are most of the timensomehow divided as by a curtain from thenactuality of it as experience.nWheeler’s anthropic principle, thus generalized, nownseems to fit nicely our requirement for an intelligiblenaccount of time asymmetry. As we look forward toward anputative event we need assume no more than the weaknanthropic principle: whatever that event, it will syllogisticallynbring about a plausible future observer of it (or else therenwould be no evidence that it had happened). As we looknbackwards we can assume the strong anthropic principle:nthat earlier event was pardy necessitated by the requirementnthat it help produce a universe in which we can look back atnit. And the weak and strong principles are not isolated fromneach other, but share a strange seam across their backsides,nso to speak, and form a kind of Janus, a sort of transitionalnJanuary between the old year and the new. Through thatnsemipermeable seam there is a leakage or tunneling ofnimplication or entailment, just as the present momentnconducts and mixes the different logical environments ofnpast and future into each other.nHow strange this reasoning is! Indeed, before its logicnunfolded, it would have been utterly implausible to the mindnthat now thinks it; and yet as each idea precipitates intonbeing, it opens up a new landscape in whose context a newnplausibility emerges. There must be something in it, so thenmind reflects, for the process itself is so like the very story ofnreal life!nFor a new implication has just come over the horizon: ournown nature and activity, as well as being parfly determinednby past causes, and partly the result of the autonomousnnnAPRIL 1990/23n